This application claims the priority of Korean Patent Application No. 2002-72696, filed on Nov. 21, 2002, in the Korean Intellectual Property Office, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein in its entirety by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to detecting and tracking of an object using an image processing system embedded in an automation system or an intelligent vehicle system. Particularly, the present invention relates to an autonomous vehicle, and more specifically, to an apparatus and method for estimating the motion of an autonomous vehicle like a mobile robot and detecting three-dimensional (3D) information of an object appearing in front of the moving autonomous vehicle.
2. Description of the Related Art
These days, as interests in robots increase constantly, various kinds of robots are being proposed and actively developed. While the robots are manufactured for many applications, motion control is a requisite for any robotic application. Particularly, in order to accurately control the motion of an autonomous vehicle like a mobile robot, not only information on the motion of the autonomous vehicle itself is required for accurate path planning and positioning of the autonomous vehicle, but also three-dimensional (3D) information of an object, e.g., an obstacle, in regard of a distance between the autonomous vehicle and the object, a 3D shape of the object, etc., is required for enabling the autonomous vehicle to avoid the obstacle appearing ahead.
There have been proposed a variety of methods for estimating the motion of an autonomous vehicle and obtaining 3D information on an object appearing in front of the moving autonomous vehicle. Usually, this 3D information is extracted from a two-dimensional (2D) image obtained through a camera. However, the methods that extract 3D information from a 2D image basically have restrictions in obtaining correct epipolar geometry information.
To solve the above-described problem, U. S. Pat. No. 6,430,304 to Hanna et al., issued on Aug. 6, 2002, and entitled “Method and Apparatus for Processing Images to Compute Image Flow Information,” U. S. Pat. Nos. 6.421,961, 6,412,961 to Hicks, issued on Jul. 2, 2002, and entitled “Rectifying Mirror,” U. S. Pat. No. 6,393,144 to Rogina el al., issued on May 21, 2002, and entitled “Image Transformation and Synthesis Methods,” or the like, teach methods for more accurately computing epipolar geometry information by removing noise. However, despite that more accurate epipolar geometry information can be obtained, still many assumptions and restrictions should be considered in computing the motion of an autonomous vehicle like a mobile robot, and therefore, there are still many restrictions when applying these conventional methods.